Books and other items printed in Gaelic from 1871 to 1900 > Gaelic bards, and original poems

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MODERN GAELIC BARDS.
The pictures of the external things, animate and
inanimate, with which he was acquainted, are not inferior
for truth, vividness and beauty, to those of any descriptive
poet. His address to his wife—Mdiri bhdn dg—may be
read beside the sweetest and most expressive of the
Lowland lyrics—while it certainly breathes a refined
courtesy and a purity of sentiment which these do not
always possess, and which is not in any way insignificant
in such a man, whether taken as an index of his moral
nature, of his intellectual endowments, or of the kindness
of nature in gifting him with such unaffected manliness
and good taste. How much education and more favour¬
able circumstances might have done for Duncan Ban
MacIntyre as a poet, it will ever remain impossible to
determine. As it is, his admirers need have no hesitation
in claiming for him a higher and more noticeable place,
than he now possesses, among the “tuneful dead, whose
names are honoured by his nation.”
INTRODUCTION TO BEN DORAJN.
In the celebrated poem which Duncan Ban dedicates to
the hill, Ben Dorain, he throws the whole soul of the
hunter Bard, and true poetic son of nature into his
' description of the place and of its sprightly denizens.
This poem, consisting of five hundred and fifty-five lines,
is the longest of Duncan Ban’s compositions. It is
adapted to a pipe tune, into all the varieties of whose
wild rhythm he moulds his language throughout with
such spirit and success, that even considered as a piece of
elaborate versification, carried out to such a length, and
on so unique a plan, it is no small feat to have been
achieved by such an author, and so circumstanced, that it
was only by crooning it over in his memory he could
give his diction the necessary finish.